Leaving California

After spending the morning of June 26^th looking for abalone shells in King Range NCA, and the afternoon finding out all the interesting nuances of Eureka, California (read my last post for that story), we were both tired and a little cranky as we approached Trinidad and our (possibly illegal) rest stop campsite.

The sun set at almost 9pm and we arrived at the rest stop around 9:15. It was already filling up. We pulled past the regular parking lot and over to the area where the big rigs would park. We pulled in behind an R-Pod trailer and next to a truck camper. About 10 minutes after we arrived – I was getting the bedding in order upstairs – a sprinter van towing a pop-up camper pulling in next to us. A family of 5 tumbled out and I’d say the oldest kid was maybe 5. They ran around with mom while dad set up the pop-up camper.

At that point I figured we were safe. That pop-up took waaay more time to set up than our sweet little RTT.

Although I was not safe from the 6am wakeup call by a screaming baby from said pop-up camper. Earplugs don’t seem to work on that particular sound. Michael tried to sleep through it, but at 6:15 the sanitation truck arrived, and it sounded like a 747 trying to take off. I’d be curious to meet the person who could sleep through that.

We were on the road pretty early that day. That was actually pretty okay by me: it was time to see the Redwoods. But first, coffee. By the sea.

The Coastal Redwood Forest is a combination of State Park and State Forest, and it’s all amazing. Hard to photograph, but amazing.

We ended up stopping at the visitor’s center that was part of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and running an out-and-back along the Prairie Creek Trail.

This was a flat trail, and not technical, but I ran three miles to a junction with another trail called Zig Zag #1 before turning back. Because it wasn’t very technical, I could run while looking up at all the trees. This area was just so lush. And dense. Even though the trail ran fairly close to the road, you couldn’t see it. In fact, it was easy to imagine that there was no road nearby at all, or that a dinosaur might be waiting just around the next turn. This place just felt old.

I loved it. I kind of regret not bringing a camera, but then those six miles would have taken all day because I would have stopped every fifty feet to take a picture.

I did find this interesting display at the Visitor’s Center.

That’s a slice of an ancient redwood tree. The tags are historical markers in the tree’s life.

This tree was a sapling when the Vikings discovered North America. Crazy.

After the run we had a fabulous tailgate lunch, featuring fish tacos. (We were given free ling cod and rock fish from some friendly people we met while looking for abalone shells, which I wrote about in my last post.)

 

Parking around these trails was… interesting. There were a few spots near the trailhead, but the vast majority of parking was right on the road. One of the many awesome things about our setup is that we can cook essentially anywhere, anytime. (Well, weather permitting.) Our tailgate lunch, in spite of not looking all that different from our tailgate coffee a few hours earlier, drew a few comments and stares from people heading towards the trails.

 

I would love to come back to this area and explore the other trails – in particular the James Irvine Trail, which heads west for 4 miles to something called Fern Canyon (which is supposed to be spectacular) and the ocean.

But we had to move on, because there was no free camping anywhere nearby and we were making for Oregon. Along the way, though, we passed through Crescent City, and because we had time we stopped in their visitor’s center to ask where we could take showers.

The girl there looked at us strangely, as if we’d asked where the nearest bell tower was while holding high powered rifles or something. She suggested the new pool that was right across the street, where open swim was going on until 4:30. She offered nothing else.

Well, it was right across the street, so we walked over there. Open swim was $5 per person, the kid behind the counter said. But when I mentioned that we just wanted to take showers, he changed his tune. Showers were $6 each, he said, and were only allowed at specific times. We were not there at one of those specific times.

He didn’t really specify why this particular rule existed, but I’m guessing it’s because of Crescent City’s homeless population, which seemed to be rather large. Maybe they were taking over the public pool and scaring the children.

I resisted the urge to tell this kid that the rule was asinine. Don’t you have to take a shower just to get into the pool? But the kid was just a kid, and he was just reciting the rules to us. Not his fault.

We’d like to swim, we said.

It was a nice shower facility, at least. Plenty of hot water, although the water pressure was like to flay the skin right off my body. I brought my razor in there with me and was shaving my pits when I heard this voice:

“What are you doing?” I turned and this little kid, maybe 10 years old, was standing there, staring at me. “Are you taking a bath?”

“Uh…” Was I about to get busted by a little kid? “I’m getting ready to get into the pool,” I told her.

“Oh. Me too,” she said.

“I’m just a little dirtier than you are,” I said, and she nodded and wandered off. Crisis averted.

We hung out in the pool for about 20 minutes as a show of good faith that we weren’t there stealing showers or anything. It was a nice little pool. I went down the slide twice but Michael refused, saying it didn’t look like it would be any fun. Pfffft. He missed out.

After our shower/pool adventure we hit the laundromat. No special rules there – they even had WiFi. So with clean bodies and all clean clothes, we hit the road towards Oregon.

Our Paige Snow Park campsite that night wasn’t anything to write home about. Apparently the Snow Park is used by snowmobilers in the wintertime. How does Colorado not have these? The high country gets lots of snow. I hear snowmobiling is popular in Colorado, too. We saw at least one warming hut, complete with a pot-bellied stove. Everything was covered in graffiti and a little trashed, though.

When we were back in civilization (Cave Junction, to be exact) we saw a USFS field office and stopped in. I tell you, those Forest Service offices have banker’s hours. But if you can get to one when they’re open, the people there are a wealth of information. When I asked for a map of dispersed camping, the man who introduced himself as Sonny said that there was no map. Within Forest Service boundaries, we could camp wherever we wanted – just stay 100 feet from any water source. That was it. There’s a LOT of Forest Service land in Oregon.

So we breathed a bit easier. We were back among friends.

Sonny also gave us a little heads up on a “secret” campsite that was on the way to Oregon Caves National Monument. Just a little flat spot off the highway, but it had a trail that lead to a secret waterfall and an old miner’s camp.

The campsite was right were Sonny said it would be, although we didn’t make it to the secret waterfall. The trail was pretty overgrown, and as we tried to progress we saw that the trail was overgrown with more of that pesky poison oak. Maybe next time.

We did get to Oregon Caves National Monument, though, and it was awesome. We went on the 2pm cave tour, which lasted around 90 minutes. I put on pants and a jacket, since the temperature inside the cave was a chilly 45 degrees. At the start of our tour, our Ranger guide asked the group if any of us were over 18 and vaguely responsible. Michael stepped up and said yes.

His responsibility was bringing up the rear. That way the Ranger would know he hadn’t lost any members of his tour. The tour was really cool and informative. Oregon Caves is different from other caves in the west (like Carlsbad Caverns) because Oregon Caves is a marble cave. (Carlsbad Caverns caves are limestone.) Marble is a metamorphic rock – it used to be limestone, before it changed from prolonged exposure to heat and intense pressure.

After the tour was over, the Ranger thanked Michael for being vaguely responsible and keeping the group together, and gave him this pin:

I’m so proud.

Next post: Crater Lake!